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SolarEdge Launching Grid Services and Virtual Power Plant Solution

May 03, 2018 by Paul Shepard

SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. is launching an innovative solution for grid services and virtual power plants, to support a shared energy economy. SolarEdge's grid services offer aggregative control and data reporting enabling the pooling of PV and storage in the cloud for the creation of virtual power plants.

Offering benefits to all stakeholders, the solution will provide utilities with the tools to leverage distributed energy generation systems to more efficiently meet demand. Energy retailers will enjoy protection from price peaks and PV system owners can increase their revenue from joining this new energy economy.

With the increasing proliferation of PV and storage around the world, the energy production industry is transitioning from a centralized system to a distributed network in which energy is produced closer to the location it is stored and consumed. This provides PV and storage system owners with a new revenue stream opportunity by selling their self-produced and stored energy.

However, the new complex network of distributed generation requires sophisticated management platforms to provide real-time, aggregated control of the demand and supply of energy.

"With the continued evolution in PV and storage, renewable energy can be affordable and abundant. We are moving closer to the day when everyone will produce, store, and sell their own energy," stated Guy Sella, CEO of SolarEdge, Founder. "Our grid services aim to accelerate the transition to a more stable and cost-effective grid in which people have more control over their energy."

"Implementing a new model of energy generation requires simultaneous advancements at the hardware, system, and network levels. Our HD-Wave inverter made PV more energy-efficient and cost effective. At the system level, our inverters synchronize energy production, usage, and storage to create a seamless user experience with our monitoring platform," stated Lior Handelsman, Marketing and Product Strategy VP of SolarEdge, Founder.

"Now at the network level, our grid services enable the aggregation and synchronization of multiple PV systems to create a distributed network. This is an important milestone in making solar energy ubiquitous," Handelsman added.

The solution helps to resolve a variety of complex energy issues such as, generation shortages, transmission bottlenecks, energy arbitrage, and frequency imbalances, thus reducing the need to invest in additional and expensive infrastructure.

It will also provide energy retailers with protection against price peaks by facilitating access to stored energy. As PV markets evolve from feed-in tariffs to net-metering and finally to self-consumption, the grid services will provide homeowners with the opportunity to maximize self-consumption and take advantage of time-of-use tariffs as a revenue stream.